And if young hearts should explode…

It has been a long time since I’ve been excited to go to a punk show. I think right now there are only a handful of punk bands that I would be genuinely pumped to go see and the list is really down to bands I haven’t seen yet. That eliminates a whole slew of bands who have been coming through Calgary, because (and this will sound pretentious) I saw them back when I thought they made good music, or at least music I liked. The issue I have with most punk bands is that they haven’t aged very well. These days most of the bands I really liked back in high school are either broken up, wearing eye make-up or trying to make the same music they were making ten years ago.

So that is where my head is at in terms of punk shows these days. Then as I’m checking for upcoming shows I see a name I haven’t thought of in a while, Propagandhi. Possibly one of the bands that influenced me the most in my younger years, the old bastards have decided to go on tour again. Now I know that they aren’t likely to play Showdown or True, but chances are they’ll kick out some classics from How to Clean Everything, or Less Talk, More Rock. This is a show I will be going to see.

So there I was all excited that I would be going to a punk show I was actually interested in, and I get an e-mail today from Stern and it says Against Me! will be playing here in March. That was just too good to be true. If anybody actually checks out any of the videos or things I post on here you would see that Against Me! is pretty much one of my favourite bands these days, and they’ve held that position for the last year or so. In fact a quick check of my last.fm account shows that I played 353 of their songs (on my laptop) in 2006. That is 93 more than the next closest artists (Belle & Sebastien). This is shaping up to be one of the better punk concert seasons I have experienced in a long-time. Now if we could only get Raised Fist out here it would be perfect.

I will now leave you with one of the top ten songs I have ever listened to. I cannot wait to hear this live.



Peace.